1. There was a time when Hillary Clinton presented herself as the continuation of Obama, to generate some early onset nostalgia for the last 8 years. Now — at the risk of seeming to reject Obama (and the economic success he represents) — she's leveraging herself on another man, Bill Clinton. It's something she does, point to that man she's associated with. We like him, don't we? He's likeable more than enough.

“Hillary Clinton’s statement that if elected president she’d put Bill Clinton ‘in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it’ suggests she’s no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it,” said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor during the Clinton administration who endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary.

2. Why should Bill Clinton be "in charge of revitalizing the economy"? The economy is our biggest concern, and "in charge" puts him in the central role. What is the argument that he's the man for that job? He knows how to do it. That seems to be based on nothing but hope that we remember a good economy during the Clinton years, but not everyone remembers those years, and those of us who do may not have any idea what Bill Clinton did that worked, and what worked back then might not be what would work now.

[T]outing the economic prosperity he oversaw... could open Mrs. Clinton up to further attacks by Mr. Trump... who has campaigned as an economic populist [and has] hit Mrs. Clinton over her husband’s trade policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Mr. Clinton signed into law in 1993 and which many voters believe hurt American workers.

4. She's offering to be the woman President and she's pointing at her husband. Her whole career has been leveraged on Bill Clinton. Forefronting him now exposes her present neediness as well as her past dependence. It's not a good look for her.

5. Bill Clinton appears to be an old, frail man. Let him grow old gracefully. He's term-limited out of the presidency, and he would be the first First Gentleman. Let him have the dignified, supportive role as we've seen in First Ladies (other than that time Hillary Clinton took over health care reform and things worked out so badly).

Here's a close-up on the photograph at the link. It's oddly confusing which hand is Bill's:

The vigorous pointing hand seems to go with his face, but that's the hand of the young lady right behind him who looks like she's thinking Hey, I'm touching Bill Clinton's hand. Bill's is that startlingly long and emaciated hand to which all the other hands reach.

Hey, if it comes to a Bill vs Trump contest, who is more manly and vigorous right now? Does Hillary really want an old looking guy challenging Trump in terms of who is more ready? What a bad contrast for team Hill, even aside from all of Bill's other problems.

I think the obvious is that while the Obama Administration has been great for social justice, it has been a disaster economically. The rich have gotten richer, but most everyone else have gotten worse economically. And much of this can be laid at the feet of Obama and the Democrats. Longest recession since the Great Depression, both greatly extended by feckless economic policies. So, looking back to the last ecomically successful Dem Admn makes perfect sense. Never mind that a god part of Clinton's economic success came from a Republic Congress, and part from the massive downsizing of our military after the fall of the USSR and the First Gulf War. Obama, of course, tried this, but the difference is that we are still fighting on two fronts, and so both the Air Force and the Marines have more and more unflyable planes, and fewer pilots.

This is the beginning of the end for Hillary. How could she cross Barack? This gives him license to let DOJ indict Hillary. And then Obama moves Biden in as the nominee so we can have Obama's third term.

And Bill doesn't have the time to fix the economy. Too busy jetting around on the Lolita Express.

"In a 2007 interview, Diamond revealed the inspiration for his song was John F. Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, who was eleven years old at the time it was released.[4][5] Diamond sang the song to her at her 50th birthday celebration in 2007.[6] However, in a 2014 interview, he revealed that the song was not, in fact, named after Kennedy. Instead, Diamond was originally going to name the song after his wife Marsha, but later decided that he wanted a three-syllable name and chose Caroline. Thus the song was not named after any specific person named Caroline.[7]

On December 21, 2011, in an interview on CBS's The Early Show, Diamond said that a magazine cover photo of Caroline Kennedy as a young child on a horse with her parents[8] in the background created an image in his mind, and the rest of the song came together about five years after seeing the picture."

Bruce Hayden,Also, if I may add, during the late 90's, part of the reason for the high level of tech employment is due to the massive investments both in the private and public sectors due to the "millenium bug". Most of the legacy computer systems were operating with with just two digits for the year data field. Almost all computer operating systems and applications were re-programmed because there were real fear that they would all crash when the clock strikes after midnight on Dec. 31, 1999.

I'm not surprised she's not running with that. Though you're right that Trump will not pass up the opportunity to point out that the "First Woman President" has ridden on the coattails of men her entire life.

My first thought was that Trump should start visiting these homeless encampments. After all, if Trump is elected POTUS the press will try to pin them on him. Get ahead of that, point out that in an America made great again people would have work and wouldn't be reduced to such penury.

during the late 90's, part of the reason for the high level of tech employment is due to the massive investments both in the private and public sectors due to the "millenium bug"

As an IT guy who left the army in 1995 and went into the public sector and saw what happened after Y2K (bunches of layoffs and massive outsourcing and H2B visa holders in conditions similar to Indentured Servitude) I can testify to the truth of this.

Before 2000 it was not unusual to see 18 and 19 year old people who could program in C# on huge projects making great money, afterwards, nope.

Her campaign makes me sad. I guess it is difficult to move on from an injustice or let go of a dream. Her time was 2008.

BTW, Mrs. Sanders ran some Burlington College down to the ground financially and they can't extricate themselves from the debt she accumulated as its president. So people think Bernie can run this country? If Hillary's campaign makes me sad, this man's campaign makes me angry -- some old fucker who didn't even have a job until he was 40 and has always been on government dole and he and his supporters think he can run this country.

The Hillarity ensues. First the Third Obama Term. Now the pivot to the Third Bill Clinton Term. She is going to have get Newt to run as her VP and campaign for a Republican Congress to get the 90's economy nostalgia tour band together again.

Hillary could try to visit the Obamavilles, but her natural demeanor makes it pretty clear that she is a misanthrope trying to simulate behavior that is a total mystery to her.

Trump on the other hand is a glad-handing kind of guy. He would be in there talking to Matt Mercer and asking him how he ended up there and how could he, Trump, help him out. And it would look totally natural because, despite his flaws, Trump really does seem to be a people person.

People, people: they're just jokes. The Donald likes to joke now and then, alright? It's all in good fun, good fun.

Except for the Dead Mouse part. Dying in Hillary's Vagina wasn't much fun for him, I imagine.

"Oh my God! It's so dark and lonely in here! And dry. I mean, it's REALLY dry in here. And scratchy, like a wool sweater or something. And now I'm stuck. I'm stuck in this woman's dark dry wooly vagina, and I can't breathe. This sucks!"

Poor little fucker, he never had a chance. But he took one for the team, you know? At least there's that...

"Instead, Diamond was originally going to name the song after his wife Marsha, but later decided that he wanted a three-syllable name and chose Caroline. Thus the song was not named after any specific person named Caroline."

That Wikipedia page needs editing. The "thus" isn't justified. Accepting ND's statement as true, he wrote a song to his wife, but he needed a different name. Why did he pick that particular other name? There was one very famous Caroline then, and it was unusual to pronounce it the way she did and the way he did. (Normally, people pronounced it the same as Carolyn.)

Has anyone ever said what Bill Clinton did, exactly, to cause the booming 90s economy? Obama has already tried raising taxes. No joy there. Everything else Clinton did -- deregulate the banks, sign every free trade policy that came across his desk -- is anathema to the democrats of 2016.Maybe killing the Branch Davidians revved up the economy?

There was already a famous and great "Caroline" song. "Caroline, No," one of the very best Beach Boys songs. From Wikipedia:

"It was initially written as "Carol, I Know". When spoken, however, Brian Wilson heard this as "Caroline, No." After the confusion was resolved, the pair decided to keep the new title, feeling that it brought a poignant earnestness to the song's sad melody."

That song was written about a real person named Carol:

"Asher says his contributions were inspired by his former girlfriend, who had moved to New York and cut her hair: "I had recently broken up with my high school sweetheart who was a dancer and had moved to New York to make the big time on Broadway. When I went east to visit her a scant year after the move, she had changed radically. Yes, she had cut her hair. But she was a far more worldly person, not all for the worse. Anyway, her name was Carol."

You gotta hand it to American women who jostle for the chance to touch a serial abuser of women who is most famous for publicly cheating on his wife with a young intern. Now get out there and vote you independent empowered chicks.

So how did he do it (revitalize the economy)? By deregulating the banks? By starting the housing bubble? By working with Republicans? By working with Wall Street? NAFTA? Was Bernie Sanders, in fact, right about Hillary? Trump may in fact run to the left on the economy compared to Hillary.

This year, politics is truly making strange bed fellows. I think Bill clinton would actually be better than Trump on the economy. However, to get Clinton you also have to get everything else that comes along with Hillary. Namely all the leftism. So its not worth it. And if Clinton could work with republicans I don't see why Trump couldn't be pushed into their direction as well. So, ultimately Id have to go Trump.

What he did definitely worked: he was president when the World Wide Web was invented. Now he just has to do that again.It's generally pretty silly how people assume that the president is responsible for the whole economy; most things happen way out of the president's control. It is possible for a president to mess it up, though, or to undo some barriers.Reagan is a pretty good example of a president who had a major impact when he put an end to runaway inflation. As was FDR, major major, although there's plenty of disagreement on whether the impact was positive or remarkably negative, extending the Depression for an extra decade.

That damn song is popular in Australia. I've heard it in bars (the patrons like to sing along), we heard it at a Sydney Roosters rugby match (fans sang along), and I heard it over the PA system in a Woolies in the Bush (no one sang along there, thank God). I go to the ends of the Earth and it follows me there. It haunts me.

1. Is there a cabinet post called "In Charge of Fixing the Economy"?2. Didn't Bill try to put Hillary in charge of healthcare? How did that work out?3. One thing we know about the hand in the picture: it is not Adam Smith's invisible hand.

I remember downloading Mosaic for the first time. Remember Gopher? And AltaVista? And people asking how you knew about all these sites and you would send them a list someone had compiled?

And of course when the Internet was released to the private sector there would be no advertising and it would usher in a new error of love and peace and cooperation and national boundaries would be meaningless.

Oh, and since the Internet was separate from meat space, meat space laws would not be applicable.

I do wish a Hillary supporter would address the argument that Hillary has so many flaws as Feminist Icon. She has succeeded on the coattails of her husband (Lurleen Wallace is not a feminist icon). She was willing to let others (and probably did herself) "blame the victims" of her husband's sexual harassment and misogyny. And now she is in effect saying, "Oh I'm just a girl, I'll need manly help to do the hard parts of being President."

Finally, I can't shake the suspicion that Hillary's run for the President is really propelled by Bill's desperation to find an alternative to his one-line description in the history books as the President who was impeached for getting oral sex and lying about it. Hillary's election will at least raise the possibility that his one-line description would be expanded to two lines and include the only President other than FDR to have more than 2 terms. But this also doesn't square very well with being a feminist icon.

I really think feminists need to ask themselves, "Is this the best we can do as a first woman President?"

those of us who do may not have any idea what Bill Clinton did that worked, and what worked back then might not be what would work now.

A President's economic impact is almost entirely limited to not screwing it up. Bill had the luck to be President as the internet was developed and the luck to exit shortly before the tech bubble collapse. NAFTA was a significant step, but almost all the impact occurred after he was out of office.

One of the problems with electing Hilary! will be similar to electing Obama. She will be viewed as such a spectacularly bad president that it will be very hard for any other woman to get elected for a long, long, time.

"Well, we tried a woman as president once. Just didn't work out. Apparently women just lack that certain something needed to be successful."

As a liberal, I think President Obama has been tremendously successful:

A much more heavily armed populace. A populace that is much more aware of their right to be armed.States recognizing and supporting those rightsTea party movementSerious sympathy, if not support for liberals and libertariansRon Paul (2008 & 2012), Rand Paul and Ted Cruz as seriou liberal candidates in a mainstream partyA fierce distrust of Washington DCIt is dying slowly but Obamacare has proven the folly of govt healthcare and probably killed it for a century or more.

And so on.

In 2008 in most states it was hard to get a concealed carry permit. In 2016 12 states do not even require a permit for concealed carry. Most other states require issuance of a permit is certain basics are met.

I don't know whether Obama is just incompetent or a Koch brothers mole. I lean more and more to the latter but it really doesn't matter, does it? If you wanted to push the country in a more liberal direction, it is hard to imagine a more successful 8 years.

She assumes Democrats won't notice the near 100% disconnect between Bill's economic policies and the demands of their voting base.

And it does belie her status as a feminist "icon". Running to let her husband run the show sounds awfully pathetic.

BTW, Mrs. Sanders ran some Burlington College down to the ground financially and they can't extricate themselves from the debt she accumulated as its president. So people think Bernie can run this country? If Hillary's campaign makes me sad, this man's campaign makes me angry -- some old fucker who didn't even have a job until he was 40 and has always been on government dole and he and his supporters think he can run this country.

Should Trump run on the irony that Bernie's wife's college can declare bankruptcy...but its students cannot do so to remove their debt from that college?

What he did definitely worked: he was president when the World Wide Web was invented. Now he just has to do that again.

Ron Winkleheimer said...Well then, guess the messaging geniuses in the Democrat party should get right on that.

It seems they're in a tight spot. His party is dead set against the only economically positive thing he ever did. You'd think Hillary (or at least her people) would have realized this isn't going to end well. I suspect this will be another win for Trump. He has the ability to burst these nonsense bubbles which have so confounded other Republican candidates.

The decision to go ahead regardless demonstrates how superficial her appeal is, believing the association with good times will sway people but no one will notice the underlying issue. This ties back to her "reset" button with Putin. She and her supporters believe she is incredibly competent and sophisticated, but her tactics are those of a junior high Student Government candidate.

She and her supporters believe she is incredibly competent and sophisticated, but her tactics are those of a junior high Student Government candidate.

Experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn at no other. Unless you are Hillary Clinton. Then you make sure everyone around you is a sycophant who won't challenge you on anything because they are even more clueless than you.

This election cycle has been dispiriting for women on several levels, but "If you elect me I'll get my husband to fix it" is just excruciating. So now the feminist rallying cry is "Let my husband do it?" This is supposed to be motivating for women?

You are right to point out that it doesn't particularly make sense. I grant that. In many ways our current ills date back to initiatives that began under Clinton. What, are we going to fix things by making the banks even bigger? I don't think so. We can't blow another dot.com bubble; even the iPhone has lost its pizzazz.

"in charge of revitalizing the economy."Yeah, right.Many years ago, during an extended spell of decent growth in the US, a European finance minister was interviewed saying (approximately) "I can't understand how the US does it. There's no one in charge of the economy over there!" and I thought to myself "No shit, and that's WHY." And this was way before Fox Butterfield.

When I saw this yesterday the first person I thought of was Lurleen Wallace, George Wallace's first wife. He couldn't succeed himself as governor of Alabama, so he had her run for governor with a wink-wink about who would be the REAL governor.

I know Bill promised two-for-one when he first ran. Is she promising one-and-a-half (Bill plus whatever she does when she doesn't bake cookies)?

Anyone wanting Hillary to win this election should see things like this as warning signs--this is exactly the sort of tone deaf campaigning that will lead to ruin.

1) Anyone who might be persuaded that Bill can "fix the economy" is already in the tank for Hillary, and associates her with him anyway. To come out bluntly and say "Bill will be taking care of this" has all the beta-female messaging of "vote for me because of my husband" that no one wants in a first female president.

2) Anyone not so easily convinced that Bill made the economy great in the '90s (that is, anyone who actually understands the economy and presidents' limited abilities to affect it) will if anything be dismayed that she somehow thinks he has some magic alchemy that will fix the economy.

3) Hillary could have run as the heir to Clintonism had she stuck with embracing moderation and "New Democrat" economic policies (modest tax hikes, welfare reform, free trade) but instead got spooked by Sanders and comes across as neither populist nor moderate. Like conservatives, moderate Democrats have no candidate this year.

Now — at the risk of seeming to reject Obama (and the economic success he represents) ...

Good thing I had put down my coffee cup before reading that! Barack Obama's economy might seem like a success to a tenured professor in a college town who foolishly gets her news from the New York Times and Washington Post, but there are lots of places you can go where the economy has not been this bad since the Depression.

“Hillary Clinton’s statement that if elected president she’d put Bill Clinton ‘in charge of revitalizing the economy … because, you know, he knows how to do it’ suggests she’s no longer touting the successes of the Obama economy, or even linking herself to it,” said Robert B. Reich

Not that Reich believes that the Obama economy is all that successful, given his latest book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, which purports to address the following:

"America was once celebrated for and defined by its large and prosperous middle class. Now, this middle class is shrinking, a new oligarchy is rising, and the country faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years. Why is the economic system that made America strong suddenly failing us, and how can it be fixed?"

Reich's previous book, Beyond Outrage is more of the same, though he strangely fails to note the relationship between Washington's economic policies under a Democrat president and his observation that "America’s economy and democracy are working for the benefit of an ever-fewer privileged and powerful people."

That seems to be based on nothing but hope that we remember a good economy during the Clinton years, but not everyone remembers those years, and those of us who do may not have any idea what Bill Clinton did that worked, and what worked back then might not be what would work now.

I remember those years very well, and what I remember most is how we got a good economy based on the dot-com bubble (which eventually popped) and Bill's triangulation between Newt Gingrich's Congress and his own party's left-wing lunatic fringe. Paul Ryan is not Newt Gingrich, and absent Newt to play off it's unlikely that the Bill Clinton triangulation will work again (make that "ever work again").

I think it's also true that part of the Clinton economy amounted to writing checks that have since come due, and then some. Besides NAFTA there's the abolition of Glass-Steagall, but most importantly there was the push on sub-prime mortgages coupled with the failure to build up Fannie Mae's reserves. That check came due big time in 2008.

Bill Clinton appears to be an old, frail man. Let him grow old gracefully.

Dissipation can do that to you. He's actually younger than I am by a few weeks but looks years older.

BTW, my first thought was HRC's trying to say, in her usual ham-fisted manner, that she was just kidding when she decided to go along w/ Bernie and reject Bill's economic legacy-the only good part of his Presidency.

David Begley @ 8:17: "This is the beginning of the end for Hillary. How could she cross Barack? This gives him license to let DOJ indict Hillary. And then Obama moves Biden in as the nominee so we can have Obama's third term."

Looking over Amendment XXII to the Constitution, seems there is nothing to prevent Biden running for President with BHO as V.P. If Biden were elected, and left office for whatever reason the day after being sworn in, BHO would fill the remainder of the Term.

I despise the Clintons (being a liberty addict, I dislike all statists but the Clintons manager to add an extra repulsive level of sleaze and dishonesty to their statism); but this may actually be good news for the economy, if Hillary is elected. When hubby Bubba was in the White House, some attributed the good economy to "the Lewinsky Effect:" i.e., Bill Clinton getting so embroiled in sex scandal, and Queen Cacklepants getting so wrapped up in harassing the accusers, that the First Couple didn't have the time and energy to screw up the economy as much as they would have otherwise. Maybe Hillary wants to dangle the carrot of a new Lewinsky Effect before the voters.

I can hear it now: Bill Gates, Tim Cook et al. simulcast on the World Wide Web and every cable news channel announcing that, despite replacing every Y2K infected software in the world, the software people screwed up and now the entire civilized world will come to a complete halt on 02/02/2020. Software now encoded in every airliner, car power plane and appliance as well as computer, cellphone and other internet-accessible device will need to be fixed, or better yet, why not just buy a new one and save the trouble?

I'm still hoping for the ultimate electoral train wreck. Hillary is nominated, then gets indicted. The DNC parachutes in Biden/Warren as a substiute. Bernie and Kasich run third party. On election day, nobody has 270 votes and Obama declares martial law, sparking the civil war.

To be fair, there had to have been at least 100 people there, on a community college campus. The low turnout was probably due to the fact that community colleges have become jaded by all of the celebrity visits. That was Oregon too, all those people in the picture are going to vote for Bernie.

Why did Hillary say she's going to put Bill Clinton "in charge of revitalizing the economy, because, you know, he knows how to do it"?

Calling Dr. Freud! Calling Dr. Freud!

Hillary sees herself, and all women, as the economy. She wants to put Bill in charge of fucking the economy. He knows how to do it! He'll fuck the hell out of that economy! The economy will be refreshed and glowing, after Bill is done with it.

Bill Clinton appears to be an old, frail man. Let him grow old gracefully.

I'm not in the mood. Leave me alone. I want to watch the game. It's nap time.

Ain't no reason why either of those two K-Street floozies can't figure out how to create the beginnings of a bubble on her watch, also.

It stands to reason that they have no other choice, actually. They're not going to get government to work better. They won't institute healthy economic policies. They're not going to get rid of the graft.

So the only answer is to create another giant, economy-crashing bubble.